Sunday, October 12, 2014

Fort Itaipu and Footnotes

I’ve
been working on my new book, which is sort of a follow up to Government UFO Secrets (notice that I’ve
slipped the name of my last book into this) and I have been doing something
that I don’t think is being done very much. I’ve been chasing footnotes again.
This means as I research a case, looking for all the information available on
it, I attempt to return to the original source as much as possible. One way of
doing that is look at the footnotes in other books to see where they gathered
the information.

The
case in question here is the attack on Fort Itaipu, Brazel on November 4, 1957.
According to all those other sources, two sentries on duty saw a “new” star blossom
in the distance, over the Atlantic Ocean, fly toward them, hover and then
slowly descend. It was an orange disk that was humming slightly. There was a
blast of heat that caused the sentries to panic. One fell to the ground
unconscious and the other torn at his clothes screaming. That alerted the
garrison, all of whom apparently reacted to the UFO.

About
the same time, as the confused soldiers attempted to find out what was
happening, the lights failed, as did their communications ability, their
generators and even their weapons. The
electricity came back quickly and the clocks, set to ring at 5:00 a.m., began
at 2:03 a.m.

The
injured soldiers were removed, first to the infirmary, and later to an Army
hospital. The fort commanding officer ordered an information blackout, telling
the soldiers not to discuss the case with anyone, not even their fellow
soldiers. Someone did talk, and Dr. Olavo Fontes, APRO’s representative in
Brazil learned of the case some two or three weeks later. Though he tried to
interview the soldiers, using his contacts as a medical doctor, he failed. His
information came from some of the officers at the fort, but he never mentioned
their names, nor did he identify the soldiers.

This
is the bare bones of the sighting. As I was conducting my research, I looked to
see what others had written about the case. In The A.P.R.O. Bulletin of September 1959, Fontes’ tale was published
apparently as it appeared in his book Shadow
of the Unknown. Later, in 1962, Coral Lorenzen, in her 1962 book, The Great Flying Saucer Hoax: The UFO Facts
and Their Interpretation, repeated the information supplied by Fontes but
in her own words. She suggested that Fontes had talked to an officer who was at
the fort, but she didn’t supply his name or that of the sentries.

Jacques
Vallee, in Anatomy of a Phenomenon,
quotes from Lorenzen’s book, and adds nothing new to the case. Donald Keyhoe,
in Aliens from Space, reports on the
case in his own words, but there is nothing in that report that is new or
different. He does speculate about alien motivations and their worries about
our first tiny steps into space. Keyhoe wrote, “It would also mean that the
burnings were intended as a demonstration of superior weapons they could use
against aggressive explorers from Earth.”

But
the point is that everything comes back to the article by Fontes in The A.P.R.O. Bulletin. I could find no
new information about the case that wasn’t traced to Fontes. I did email Thiago Luiz Ticchetti, a Brazilian UFO researcher and a co-editor
of Revista UFO and Coordenador da
Revista UFO Brasil: www.ufo.com.br, who did update the case for me. He wrote that he had been unable
to verify the tale of the injured soldiers, and unable to verify the power
outage whether it was momentary or something a little longer. According to what
he told me, most Brazilian UFO researchers believe that there had been a UFO
sighting, but the details of what would be a Close Encounter of the Second
Kind, meaning a sighting in which there are some sort of physical effects,
remained unverified.

Fontes, according to his own
writings, never got the chance to talk to the sentries, so much of what he
wrote about their reactions had to come from the officers that Fontes said he
had interviewed. The problem is that he never identified them. The tale then is
based, at best, on second-hand testimony and we have no way to verify the
information supplied by Fontes. We must trust him based solely on the trust
that Coral Lorenzen had in him and if we have no faith in that, then almost
everything he wrote about the Fort Itaipu case must be carefully scrutinized.
In the end, the best we can say, based on what we know, is that there was a UFO
sighting and the other elements are yet to be verified.

24 comments:

The effort to verify the source of this story leads nowhere. There's a good 3-part examination of this likely hoax, but you'll need to translate it from Spanish:http://marcianitosverdes.haaan.com/2008/09/la-verdad-del-ataque-ovni-al-fuerte-itaip-primera-parte-2/

KevinI think you correctly highlight a very significant problem for Ufology.

It became clear to me some years ago that even apparently very credible writers with strong academic track records often included material in their work that simply does not stand up to scrutiny as if it were fact.

In this specific case we simply can not say what did or did not happen.

There are a few authors that have provided rigorously documented material but I find it shocking how often poorly documented cases creep in, and even more shocking how often there is selective use of data on both sides of the debate

The issue is we all end up re-inventing the wheel and going back over the basics. There is a crying need for a really definitive casebook with total documentation and rigorous analysis (ideally from different perspectives within the same volume).

If only we could find the modern equivalents of MacDonald, Thayer, Saunders, Sagan, Thornton Page, Ruppelt, Hillenkoetter and Hill etc. Get them together for a couple of years with a predefined shortlist of 40 or 50 cases with exceptionally good data (don't think there are many more) and publish the result.

However, we plod on.....

(actually - just looking at my historical wish list I seem to have plucked a group of physicists, intelligence experts and rocket scientists together (plus the odd psychologist etc)...uum...sounds familiar - but I digress).

I speculated on the Fort Itaipu case long ago, noting that there were no names anywhere, either of the two sentries or the doctors at the hospital where they were taken (if they indeed were taken there), or of any other witnesses.

Also, the Nov 4 date is not consistent. Some writers give it as Nov 5 or Nov 6. This leads me to suppose someone got the details of the Levelland cases in the USA, and maybe even the Stokes case, and invented a Brazilian UFO case around them.

Whether Fontes made the story up, whether he got it from an unnamed source, or whether there was a UFO sighting but the details are grossly exaggerated, we shall never know.

There is a discussion of this case somewhere on the web, maybe the reference Curt Collins gives. The writer's conclusion is that Fort Itaipu was a hoax. Until and unless some names are given and verified, that is probably the best way to regard it.

After 57 years, I hold out no hope that anyone will ever be identified.

Dr. Olavo Fontes was like the Dr. James McDonald of Brazil--extremely intelligent, dogged, and a pillar of integrity. I've never known an instance where he was ever suspected of "making it up". He almost certainly WAS approached by somebody saying he was an officer and this incident did occur. He probably vetted the source as best he could and then ran into a wall of secrecy he couldn't penetrate.

Doesn't mean the incident happened. Maybe somebody played Fontes. No doubt Fontes, like everybody, could make mistakes. But it just burns me up when he is accused of "making it up."

Unlike CDA, the fact that it was said to have happened at the same time as the car stallings and Stokes' incident in the U.S. (where Stokes said he felt a wave of heat from a UFO and seemed to have a heat rash afterward) makes perfect sense, rather than indicating a copycat case. All incidents might be explained by the emission of strong microwave radiation.

The U.S. military later developed "non-lethal warfare" microwave weapons that do the same thing as described at Fort Ipatu, namely a microwave weapon that makes people feel like they are burning up and force them to retreat. See, e.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

Although not intended to cause any physical burns, a few such incidents have occurred from overdosing. Sweaty guards in uniforms would be especially susceptible as the sweat in the skin and clothing would be heated up rapidly and lead not only to the sensation of burning but actual superficial burns.

I certainly appreciate your defense of Fontes, but I'm not as enthusiastic as you about this report. As has been pointed out, there are no names associated with it. None. The sentries have never been identified, the officers have not been identified, and there is no paperwork about the case.

Friends in Brazil have reinvestigated the case. They believe that the case is, at best, a UFO sighting.

I will note that I found Fontes reports of the reactions of the sentries, and the officers, to be somewhat over the top. I wonder why there were only two sentries, why there was no corporal of the guard, no sergeant of the guard and no officer of the day. In other words, there are some important details missing.

In the end, I accept the investigation completed by those in Brazil who attempted to follow up on what Fontes had found. Without some additional information I must accept what they found on their follow up investigations.

I wrote:"All incidents might be explained by the emission of strong microwave radiation."

To which Terry the Censor replied (another snarky commentator hiding behind a pseudonym):"Or claimants were tailoring new reports to "collaborate" previous reports."

To "collaborate"? Don't you mean "corroborate"? Do you know the difference? (Yes, I can be snarky too.)

The original Levelland car stallings the night of Nov. 2, 1957, were multiple, probably mostly independent reports made before widespread media coverage, making it kinda hard to "tailor new reports to 'collaborate' previous reports."

I'm also unaware of any media coverage that proposed strong RF or microwave emissions as being responsible for these stallings. The AF, instead, was soon claiming ball lightning was responsible.

The Levelland car stallings/radio/headlight interference cases were preceded 3 weeks earlier by similar cases in France. (In one such case, the witnesses also reported feeling something like an electric shock and temporary paralysis, which might also possibly be explained by rapidly fluctuating EM or magnetic fields.)

No doubt the citizens of Levelland were "collaborating" with those previous reports from France, especially hard to do since the U.S. media never reported these cases.

Other UFO car stallings/radio interference were reported after Levelland in the U.S. and Canada, absolutely everybody no doubt "colloborating".

Stallings, radio interference, and headlight dimming (or paralysis) are also quite different than the reports of burning or actual burns (Fort Itaipu), or feeling heat and then seeming to have a heat rash or sun burn (Stokes), yet all might have a common thread of being caused by strong EM sources.

(Stokes did have in common with Levelland reporting his car and other cars on the highway stalling and radio being interfered with, again by large egg-shaped UFO.)

So please explain how "claimants were tailoring new reports to 'collaborate' previous reports", if "previous reports" simply did not get any publicity or did not bring up a theory or mention details of later reports.

It is only in retrospect years later that we can see these cases might have a unifying theory behind them (strong EM emissions in RF or microwave range). We also know NOW that the U.S. military has since developed weapons using strong RF/microwave emissions that mimic what witnesses reported over 50 years ago (stalling internal combusion engines and inducing burning sensations in people).

Those hoaxing new claimants certainly were technological visionaries, figuring this all out in only a few days.

And I do not hide. Whenever I contact a UFO buff via email, I always give my legal name. And my online handle is also my gmail account, so anyone can find me.

The true purpose of my handle is to annoy fringers who frequently cry "censorship." Seems to be working.

> To "collaborate"? Don't you mean "corroborate"? Do you know the difference?

Thank you for the correction. And congratulations: by exposing my typo, you have proven aliens exist.

> Yes, I can be snarky too.

You mean, "devoid of humour." Not the same thing.

All kidding aside...

As for UFO radiation scares, alongside actual reports, there is also the public perception of such associations. You needn't be aware of any UFO reports to think aliens bring radiation.

The blog Radiation Cinema specialises in the subject of radiation in the media, and includes a 1957 movie where an alien is a source of mysterious radiation readings. No doubt other commenters could supply other examples from the 1950s.

Such things were in the air, so to speak. There can be no doubt script writers thought the general public would buy the association.

David, are you aware of the very detailed article on the Fort Itaipu case by Edison Boaventura Jr., president of the Grupo Ufológico do Guarujá (GUG), and originally published on the Brazilian UFO Research Network [BURN] website, from Sept. 2008, that Curt Collins noted in a link to, above, a re-posted "Part 1" version of this (originally in Portuguese) article?

If not, I would strongly suggest you carefully read the entire article by Boaventura, who intermittently spent over _27 years_ investigating this case, and finally concluded, based on his extraordinarily assiduous and extensive research, that Dr. Olavo T. Fontes had, essentially, most probably and almost wholly fabricated his claims about this case. Among others.

I located the full version of the article on another Brazilian UFO research website, www.fenomenon.com/br, and ran it through Google's somewhat "grammatically-challenged" translation option, and then created a TinyURL link to the article, which is as follow:

See: http://tinyurl.com/k6bj73o

I, and others here, would appreciate your evaluation of this article, and whether it changes your mind or not about Dr. Fontes veracity in regard to the supposed details of the Fort Itaipu incident, as alleged by Fontes.

I did read the said article earlier this year, and formed the same conclusion as Steve Sawyer. The case is, without much doubt, a fabrication, if not by Dr Fontes then by an anonymous informant.

Notice that whereas the event is stated to have occurred in early November, it was not brought to Fontes' attention until several weeks afterwards (so he claims).

Other famous Brazilian cases Fontes investigated are the Trindade Island sighting of January 1958 and the so-called Ubatuba fragments affair a few months before.

Neither has withstood the test of time and Fontes revealed his extreme gullibility in each. The Ubatuba case was debunked by the Condon committee (the fragments are useless as ET evidence) and the Trindade photos are almost certain fakes.

But Kevin would probably rather not go into these.

There was also an article in FSR (in 1960 I believe) where Fontes tried to show Michel's straight line thesis applied to certain Brazilian cases. Highly unconvincing too.

You really don't need to control the blog. I can do that without your attempts to read my mind.

I'm not sure I would hold up the Condon Committee as a paragon of scientific virtue. Remember they solved one case by saying that it was a natural phenomenon so rare it had never seen before or since but didn't bother to explain what it was... so their pronouncements on various cases must be reviewed carefully...

And, the Trinidade pictures have been discussed on this blog in the past.

I'm afraid that your assessment of Fontes might be closer to the truth than many wish to admit. My friends in Brazil, who advised me on the Fort Itaipu case suggest, at best, it is a simply UFO sighting and that the other elements have not been verified.

CDAWhilst I would agree that there is simply no point in publishing cases like the one under discussion...and no evidence to base a discussion of it on... I don't think it is appropriate to extend that conclusion to other cases.

Both the Isle de Trindade photos and the Ubatuba fragment cases are far more complicated....but I digress.

Steve Sawyer wrote:I would strongly suggest you carefully read the entire article by Boaventura, who intermittently spent over _27 years_ investigating this case, and finally concluded, based on his extraordinarily assiduous and extensive research, that... Fontes had, essentially, most probably and almost wholly fabricated his claims about this case. Among others.

...I, and others here, would appreciate your evaluation of this article, and whether it changes your mind or not about Dr. Fontes veracity in regard to the supposed details of the Fort Itaipu incident....

Having now read the article, I would say the "unquestionable" case against Fontes as a "hoaxer" would not stand up in court, being almost entirely the say-so of one totally anonymous Brazilian Ufologist, who for all we know, had a personal grudge against Fontes, thus pure hearsay evidence (ironically one of the same criticisms leveled against Fontes).

The other part of Bonaventura's argument is that most military people he contacted (such as soldiers stationed there at the time) said they didn't know anything, or it never happened, or refused to cooperate. Against this, he mentions some contradictory testimony saying it did happen or there WAS a UFO sighting of some sort.

E.g., the son of one of the commanding officers said his father mentioned the UFO sighting, but never said anything about two soldiers being burned. Two military people, one the PR guy at the fort, stated it did happen, one of the soldiers died (never reported anywhere else), and there was indeed a power outage at the fort, just as Fontes reported. He also added the curious detail that one of the rifle ends was melted and twisted. Another military person quite independently reported the same detail that Fontes never mentioned nor was written up anywhere else. Allegedly the twisted rifle was in a military museum.

Bonaventura wrote an archivist at the museum, who told him he didn't know anything about such a rifle, and Bonaventura couldn't find the rifle when he personally visited the museum. From this Bonaventura draws the rather questionable conclusion that the military later must have added the detail of the melted, twisted rifle to something that never happened. An equally valid hypothesis might be said rifle was kept in the usual 90++% of collections that most museums never have on public display and instead reside in dusty boxes and drawers in their basement.

Bonaventura also tried to verify from public and military records any power outages that might have happened in the area or the fort. Because he couldn't document it, he concluded it never happened.

In summary, the testimonial evidence is contradictory, a few people saying they knew about it, most not knowing. Nothing was apparently written down in PUBLICLY available military records and an unnamed person claimed Fontes hoaxed the whole thing for personal gain, but no real solid evidence was offered to support this or that he hoaxed other UFO cases. (Fontes, e.g., would have had to fabricate very real magnesium fragments and lab results in the Ubatuba case.)

I could cite similar arguments advanced against other famous cases, such as key allegedly researchers fabricating evidence, or POTENTIAL witnesses not knowing anything or contradicting one another, or nothing being written down in military records.

To cite one example of how such argumentation can possibly be misleading, I once paid a visit to Edwards AFB to try to track down any records there of some famous UFO incidents. What I discovered is that NOTHING is mentioned about any of these in the daily logs, base histories, the base newspaper, etc., yet we know about them from other, UFO-specific AF documents that were later declassified. And I bet if you asked the average soldier stationed at the base during these incidents, they could quite honesty tell you they knew nothing, heard anything, thought nothing happened, etc. And those who did know something might choose not to talk for various reasons.

I would agree that Fort Itaipu is a cold case with not much to go on, yet suggestions that there might have been something to it. Based on the few present-day witnesses who confirmed something did happen, it strikes me that Fontes did NOT make it up. They even provided details (one soldier died, they would have been treated elsewhere, not at Fort Itaipu, and a rifle was melted and twisted) that Fontes never mentioned, nor did anybody else writing about it previously.

However, if the event was real, we may never know the truth unless presumably heavily classified documents are someday released.

I find it strange that Fontes would be criticized for not providing a name for his source, yet Bonaventura did exactly the same thing by keeping his Ufologist anonymous accusing Fontes of hoaxing the whole thing for alleged fame and glory. Without knowing anything about this source or what evidence he has, it could be nothing more than good old-fashioned character assassination for personal reasons, hardly sterling evidence.

I have found the article by Jules Lemaitre (a pseudonym) in FSR, Jan 1960, which states that "American Officers from the US Army Military Mission arrived at the fortress together with officers from the Brazilian Air Force to question the sentries and the other witnesses involved".

This article is lifted from Dr. Fontes' original in the APRO Bulletin.

This means the US military was involved as well as the Brazilian military and the two interacted.

And who were the personnel involved? We do not know and never will know. Nobody can get anywhere with this case. Has anyone ever asked the "US military" about their involvement, and if so, what response did they get?

The whole case is a complete and total dead end. The only sensible answer is that the event never happened. Someone invented the tale. We shall never know who did, and how on earth can anyone now expect to be able to investigate such an event as this?

I agree with DR that Bonaventura is as guilty as Fontes by not naming his sources. Perhaps DR can name the "present day witnesses who confirmed something did happen". I hope they actually were there and not merely yet more 2nd or 3rd hand witnesses (as I suspect). Who, for instance, told the story of one soldier dying and about the melted rifle?

I guess my initial reaction to your summary of the Bonaventura article is the same as yours. Given that there were several sources of information from within and around the Fort giving (conflicting) tales of what is presumably the same UFO report, it seems very unlikely that Fontes could have made up a story and foisted it on a bunch of people who would later relate it to Bonaventura at some indeterminate time in the future.

The inconsistencies between the witness' testimonies could be due to normal variations, or conceivably due to a deliberate hoax. In the latter case, Fontes would have been the victim of a hoax, not the originator of it.

Good evening. I didn't research the Itaipu case for 27 years, but I spent good 10 years on if. I can assure you that there's not any evidence to support that the soldiers were burned. The case was a CE-2. I got inside the army circle and could get the best informations about it. No one, even those on duty that day, confirm the case; only that they had a UFO event.

CDA wrote:I agree with DR that Bonaventura is as guilty as Fontes by not naming his sources. Perhaps DR can name the "present day witnesses who confirmed something did happen". I hope they actually were there and not merely yet more 2nd or 3rd hand witnesses (as I suspect). Who, for instance, told the story of one soldier dying and about the melted rifle?

I DIDN'T say Bonaventura never named his sources. Generally he did, but NOT the Brazilian Ufolgist who claimed Fontes was a glory-hound hoaxer, saying the person didn't want to be named.

As for the guy talking about the soldier dying and the twisted/melted rifle, didn't you say you had read the article and it convinced you the whole thing was a hoax? Now you are asking me to provide the names of the sources? Well, here's a summary:

Cpt.Alonso José Jr, reserve: Told the story in detail (according to confusing translation). Burned soldiers were taken with urgency to the city of Duque de Caxias, near Rio. Photographed the site, but was never able to get the names of the soldiers.

Cpt. Galileo Ramos: Served 30 years at the fort; said one of soldiers died and tip of rifle twisted by heat; didn’t know names of those involved and said he got the story from another soldier.

Lt. Azevedo, public relations at fort: Confirmed the story and was another who said a rifle was twisted by the heat. It was currently in the Army Historical Museum of Rio de Janeiro. Confirmed there was a blackout. Confirmed one soldier was rendered unconscious while the other rolled on the floor from the heat. They were treated at the clinic of the unit, now located elsewhere. Didn’t know the soldiers’ names. Suggested contacting senior military, whom he provided names and contact information. Unclear where he got the details. (Was there? Records? From somebody else? Bonaventura doesn’t say.)

Former commander Osman Ribeiro de Moura: In poor health, confirmed the sighting of a UFO, but couldn’t remember details and had no information on the burned soldiers. Didn’t know their names.

Pompey Adston Piza, son of commander Adston Pompey Piza (or maybe Mr. Narbal de Mello, translation unclear): Was 10 years old at the time. Father told him that morning, early November, that he and other soldiers had seen a luminous object at dawn descend on a gun battery. Never heard anything about soldiers being burned. News to him.

Mr. Darcy Bento da Costa, nurse at the time: Didn’t know anything. Never heard about it at the time. Thought he would have known if they were treated on the ward, but also thought the incident could have been suppressed (again translation unclear).

Mr. Jose Costello, served there in battery command and in military 37 years. He and fellow soldiers heard rumors about it at time but didn’t take it seriously. Didn’t think it ever happened.

A variety of other named soldiers said they didn’t know anything and didn’t know any names of those supposedly involved. One senior officer, Col. Erasmus Days, said he never heard about the case and considered it a myth.

Still, myth or not, I think it is pretty clear from the various witnesses interviewed, that there was a story of the UFO and burnt soldiers quite independent of Fontes. Fontes didn’t invent it.

I think we should thank Kevin Randle for his critical assessment of the Fort Itaipu UFO Case from 1957. Since there were no identifiable witnesses who could support the claim that the sentries and the fort had been attacked by a UFO, it is most reasonable to conclude that the whole story was a fabrication by Dr Olavo Fontes. UFO researchers would do well to consign it to what I call ufology’s 7F Basket (Fiction, Fantasy, Fabrication, Fraud, False Memory, Folklore, and Flapdoodle).

This sort of sensational UFO story which supposedly happened in a far-off land many years ago seems to be one of a certain genre of UFO myth which is usually found to have been promoted by one particular individual. If such a story attracts sufficient attention it will often be repeated and republished in UFO literature until it becomes an established part of UFO lore. A similar sort of case is the Tananarive, Madagascar, UFO case of August 16th 1954.

It was claimed that this UFO, a large “electric green ball”, flew silently at low level over the city of Tananarive (now Antananarivo) causing power outages and causing cattle to panic and dogs to howl. This was followed by a second silvery sphere “also about 40 meters long”. According to principal witness, M. Edmond Campagnac, “tens of thousands of people saw it” flying just 250 meters above the city.

Unfortunately for M. Campagnac, who first made these claims in 1964 and repeated them many times during the following 40 years, no other witnesses who were present in Tananarive during this alleged UFO visitation have ever come forward and no newspapers or official documents from 1954 relating to the case have ever been found. A brief account of the Tananarive UFO case can be found at:- www.ufocasebook.com/2010/madagascar1954.html

Like the Fort Itaipu UFO case, and several others from that era, I believe that this one can be confidently consigned to ufology’s 7F Basket.

I find it interesting that a FOIA declassified document shows that US officials as well as the Brazilian Secret Police have investigated the Fort Itaipu case. It is a document from the Brazilian Embassy in Washington and it can be seen on this page : http://www.projetosonda.com.br/?load=mod4&idm=31&pag=0&id=17&acao=v

alainstauffer says: I find it interesting that a FOIA declassified document shows that US officials as well as the Brazilian Secret Police have investigated the Fort Itaipu case. It is a document from the Brazilian Embassy in Washington and it can be seen on this page : http://www.projetosonda.com.br/?load=mod4&idm=31&pag=0&id=17&acao=v

I would respond to this by saying that the “declassified document” presented on Projeto Sonda’s (Brazilian) website makes the Fort Itaipu case look even more like a hoax. The heading makes it look as if this brief statement about the Fort Itaipu case –quoting Dr Olavo Fontes-- came from the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C. , and it is neither dated nor signed. It is in English rather than Portugese --as one might expect-- and there is no indication of who sent it to whom. Nothing would be easier than to forge such a document using a photocopy of the embassy’s headed paper.

The story on the website suggests that the “Brazilian Secret Police” had asked the US embassy (presumably that in Rio de Janeiro since this was in 1957 before Brasilia was made Brazil’s capital) to send “researchers” from Washington and their report –the alleged declassified document-- was subsequently released under FOIA. I really don’t think so. Why would US government personnel release a letter in English on the Brazilian Embassy’s headed paper? This makes no sense.

One feature of this genre of sensational UFO story hoax –like the one I cited previously from Madagascar—is that the person who originally promotes it usually insists there were dozens, maybe hundreds, even thousands, of witnesses who saw the UFO(s) and all that subsequently happened.Another bogus case rather like this is an alleged 1955 case in Karachi, Pakistan, which was told in the UK’s UFO Magazine in 1999 by a certain Frank J Parker. This was undoubtedly a work of fiction and it can be found, if anyone’s interested, at:-